WHEN Brad Pitt arrived in Hollywood with just $350 in his pocket, he probably didn’t dare imagine that within a few years he’d be commanding $20 million per picture.
Yet that’s what Thelma And Louise did for Brad. And following blockbusters such as
Interview With A Vampire, Legends Of The Fall, Seven, Fight Club, Ocean’s Eleven and
Mr & Mrs Smith he is arguably the King of Hollywood. His gritty performance in the recent
Babel has also made him a hot contender for this year’s Oscars.
Brad is also a tabloid fixture. After an engagement to Oscar winner Gwyneth
Paltrow, a marriage to Hollywood sweetheart Jennifer Aniston, he is now living with Oscar winner and Mr & Mrs Smith co-star Angelina
Jolie. After months of playing cat-and-mouse with the media, the glamorous couple went public with their relationship in 2005. They have three children, son Maddox and daughters Zahara and Shiloh.
The family travels constantly (recent visits have been to Pakistan, Haiti and Ethiopia, where they adopted
Zahara, and Namibia, where Jolie gave birth to Shiloh). The socially-conscious couple donates millions to charities through their
Jolie-Pitt Foundation and they produce socially-relevant films through Brad’s Plan B production company.
Q: Brad, at 42, do you choose your projects differently than you did in your younger days?
A: Making movies is a lot of work. If you’re going to invest so much time on anything, it should be something that has meaning for you. What is important to me is to make good films. And being a father has definitely coloured the way I pick roles because my thought nowadays is, ‘What will they think of this?’ I’m a little bit more mature about choosing roles.
Q: Are you a good father?
A: I can’t think of anything more important than teaching your kids something. There’s nothing more important than family. Having children changes your life. I can’t imagine life without my kids. I can’t live without them.
Q: You seem to be constantly travelling, is that the case?
A: I love the adventure of shooting films in a remote location, like Morocco for
Babel. It is one of the perks that we actors get to experience, to really get under the skin of a place. So I’m definitely up for that — I’ve become a citizen of the world!
Q: You seem more interested in the acting than being a big movie star?
A: Absolutely. I’m interested in stretching as an actor. It’s the roles, not the image, I’m concerned with.
Q: What kind of directors do you like working with?
A: A director who is able to leave you to do your job and to laugh at people’s egos.
Q: When you are filming, do you know if a film is going to work or not?
A: I never really know because there are too many elements involved. Even when you have a great script, the picture can still end up as a piece of trash. So I pick projects that interest me and involve people that I respect.
Q: You reportedly receive $20 million a picture. How important is money to you?
A: It really isn’t about money for me these days. It’s about the script. It’s about the people I’m working with. I’d like to do more character roles.
Q: Do you feel like a superstar?
A: Only when the paparazzi camp outside my home or people go through my trash!
Q: Did it take you time to feel comfortable with the media?
A: At first I didn’t understand the focus so I didn’t know how to handle the questions. Now, I’ve realised I can change the focus of an interview if I choose and that makes me more comfortable in these situations.
Q: What do you do when you’re relaxing at home?
A: Spend time with the kids, write bad songs and play my guitar. I love music, but I suck. We watch DVDs, I like biking and playing with the dogs. We barbecue. We have a good life.
Q: Besides acting and your family, what are your biggest passions?
A: Architecture. That’s what I originally went to college for. I didn’t continue because it was too heavy a programme. Those guys didn’t have any fun! They were working day and night. I saw college as something else.
Q: What is it about architecture you like so much?
A: It moves me like music. It has rhythms, harmonies, it’s symphonic. Part of what I like about it is the discovery. I love the experience of, in any individual room, finding a line, an angle, something interesting, and following it and seeing where it goes.
Q: You’re involved in rebuilding an eco-friendly New Orleans as well as building a Millennium Village in Cambodia. You also donate millions to help poverty in Africa through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation. What led to your interest in poverty?
A: For me, it goes back to the will to understand and that’s what we’re lacking most. So I wanted to educate myself as much as I could to understand the situation and understand the solutions. I’ve seen the detriments of poverty and I’ve seen how easy the cures can be — cures that cost cents to the richest nations in the world.
Q: Are you a fighter?
A: No, I wasn’t one even growing up. I sing to get rid of pent-up aggressions. I turn up my music so it’s really loud and sing along. I also love driving.
It is a great way of getting out your frustrations. You can yell at someone, or you can play the nice guy and let someone in ahead of you. It makes you feel as if you’re in charge and that’s rare these days.
Q: Does love conquer all?
A: I don’t accept that love conquers all or that, in a relationship, two become one. I think that two become two strong, independent people.
Q: What’s your definition of love?
A: I believe your idea of love changes as you get older. I thought I was in love when I had the little girlfriend in sixth grade. Now I understand what’s important for me, what’s important for the team, what’s important for her. I have it the best now that I’ve ever had. And love should be kept creative.
Q: And now to the really deep questions; what is your most annoying habit?
A: Smoking.
Q: Your favourite food?
A: I like steak.
Q: Your favourite piece of clothing?
A: Jeans.
Q: And most importantly: what does The World’s Sexiest Man (as he was voted twice) sleep in?
A: Birthday suit.
Brad Pitt
Perhaps best known as the ‘Lara Croft’ character in the Tomb Raider movies, or as the daughter of actor Jon Voight, she won her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as a psychiatric patient in Girl, Interrupted. Nowadays she is reportedly paid $15 million per picture and much of her fortune is ploughed into international charity projects, especially those involving refugees.
Q: For your current film The Good Shepherd (the story of the CIA’s birth, directed by Robert De Niro) you had to attend etiquette coaching. Did it rub off on you?
A: I hope some of it has. I was surprised that I wasn’t as far off as I thought I was before I started. But there are little things that rubbed off — polite things that make sense. But then other things were just ridiculous.
Y’know, they say things like, “When you’re listening to somebody, tilt your head to the side as if you’re coy, so you’re not aggressive, you’re receiving and demure.” That kind of thing makes no sense to me because it’s not how I actually feel and it’s a false way to behave. And yet there are nice things about the way to set a table, hold a glass, your posture, send notes of thank you, all of which do make sense.
Q: What did you like about De Niro as a director?
A: Many, many things — he’s a perfectionist, he’s a great researcher and gets into the details of everything. He hires the best people he can find and amasses a great team and he’s great to that team. He’s a good leader. People like to work for him so it’s a joy to be on set even if it’s a very, very long day. He also understands an actor’s process so, for example, when I had to do emotional scenes, without discussing it he set the environment right for me. Directors that don’t understand that sort of thing just aren’t as sensitive.
Q: Are you hoping for a quiet 2007 or a busy year with a lot going on?
A: We’re going to have a big 2007. It’s just more of the same! We don’t plan to — we just want to grow in all different directions. Everything is just getting crazier and crazier whether it’s at home or all our work abroad, all the different countries we’re visiting. Our children are growing up and their personalities are amazing and, y’know, we want to have more children, we want to live abroad more, do different things with our work, whatever comes. We’re just happy to be able to do those things and have as much fun with our family as we have done in the past.
Q: What is the responsibility for celebrities in the world?
A: The responsibility of all of us is to do the most with what we have. Many celebrities have a lot, so I believe they should do a lot, they can. But everybody has a different way of doing that. Some people are more focused on their own family, some people locally, some people globally. But I think everybody, and that’s not just celebrities, should do whatever they can. And, by the way, it feels great!
Q: How has being a mother changed you as an actress?
A: It makes me want to work a lot less. The last few films I’ve done I was on for five or seven weeks but two years apart. I don’t work very much now.
Q: What do you like most about being a mother?
A: I just love my kids, any parent will say that. My children make me, they’re so interesting, I love talking to them. Now Mad’s at an age where he writes me letters, he talks, and we have the greatest conversations. Zahara’s two and she is the funniest, craziest little person. Last night we were just sitting there watching her, in hysterics, and that’s the joy of life. They’re just fun.
Q: How do you get the energy to take the kids around the world with you?
A: Well, we have the finances for support and that’s the truth of it. I wouldn’t suggest any single woman on her own sitting in a coach with three kids, God bless her, because that’s hard. So I have Brad helping me, we have a lot of people helping us get through. We’re very lucky. We have it easier than a lot of people. When it’s just us without the support we are wrecked, but we love it and I think the work of it is part of the fun!
Q: You were on your own with Maddox for a while. Is it better now, having a partner in crime?
A: Having Brad in my life is a wonderful thing. Raising kids is a very hard thing to do and it’s also a great joy, but it is so much easier when you have somebody supporting you through it; someone who you can look over and smile at when something goes totally crazy; someone who’s remembering this time with you. Being a parent means so much now that I share it with somebody and, beyond that, for my children, they have a great father.
Q: Can you talk about the work you’re doing with the U.N.?
A: I’ve been working with UNHCR for five years now and will stay focused with them, with refugees, because unfortunately they’re not going to go away anytime soon. Even though there are fewer refugees in the world, there are more internally displaced people in situations like Darfur. And I have a deep respect for these people because they’re the most vulnerable people in the world.
I love working with them and I’ll continue to, and we’ll continue to work in Cambodia and Ethiopia — our children’s countries. We’re also really pushing for legislation for AIDS orphans.
Q: Do you show your kids part of their own cultures?
A: Yes, we celebrated Zee’s Christmas on January 8. And for Mad it’s the water festival in Buddhism. These are traditions in their countries. We also try to focus on what’s happening in different parts of the world and take the kids with us on visits. Maddox has visited hospitals with us, and, although I hate to be the mother who’s pushing my kids to do humanitarian things, it’s great because he’s growing up with a natural view of the world. He sees kids, whether they’re sick kids, whether they’re from another country he’s been to, and he doesn’t hesitate to play and talk with them.
Q: What is it that you find so special about kids?
A: I think they keep us honest, they are what we need to be focusing on for the future. They have no agenda, they’re very straightforward people, so I trust and like them.
Q: Is Brad still helping to build homes in New Orleans?
A: Yes. We’re just back from there and he’s had a lot of meetings, as it is a very complicated situation. He’s working really hard and I’m so proud of his effort because he’s involved in a huge project that he’s going to see through to the end. He’s shooting a film there just now, so while he’s there for that he’ll continue working on the rebuilding.
Q: Are we going to see you two together on the big screen soon?
A: I don’t know, we were joking that there would be nobody to watch the children if we both go to work at the same time. So we don’t know, but maybe if we can find something . . . that’d be good.
Interviews by Jordan Riefe and Oliver O’Neal/Planet Syndication.
Angelina Jolie
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